TRYON Edwards once said: “Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steadily gains in strength. At first it may be as a spider’s web, easily broken through, but if not resisted, it soon binds us with chains of steel.”
The psychologist, Abraham Maslow, once wrote that “the story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.” The average person settles for far less than they are truly capable of achieving. “Compared with what you could be, everything you have accomplished so far is only a small part of your potential.”
The challenge, Brian Tracy believes, is that you come into the world with the most incredible brain, surrounded by unlimited possibilities for success, happiness and achievement, but you start off with no instruction manual. As a result, you have to figure it all out for yourself. “Most people never do. They go through life doing the very best they can, but they never come close to having and being all that is possible for them.”
The foundation principle of Western philosophy and of modern thought is the Law of Cause and Effect. It says that for every cause, there is an effect. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. This law says that even if you do not know the reason why something happens, there is still a reason that explains it.
Based on this philosophy, Tracy offers one of the most important of all success principles: “If you do what other successful people do, you will eventually get the same results that they do.”
Nature is neutral
Nature does not favour one person over another. The Bible says, “God made the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” When you do the things that other successful people do, over and over again, you will eventually get the same results that they do. It is not a matter of luck, chance or accident. It is a matter of law.
This simple principle is immensely powerful. “If you want to be happy, healthy, prosperous, popular, positive and confident, just find out how other people who are enjoying these benefits got that way and do the same things that they do.”
In his study of psychology and metaphysics, Tracy eventually learned that there are a series of universal principles and timeless truths that explain much of human success and failure. These principles explain happiness and unhappiness, riches and poverty, health and ill-health, and good and poor relationships. These mental laws explain why some people have wonderful lives and why others do not.
The law of control
The first law that he discovered was the Law of Control. This law says that “you feel happy to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. You feel unhappy to the degree to which you feel you are not in control of your own life.”
Modern psychology calls this “Locus of Control Theory.” Psychologists differentiate between an internal locus of control and an external locus of control. Your locus of control is where you feel the control exists in each area of your life. This location determines your happiness or unhappiness more than any other factor.
If you feel that you are the primary creative force in your own life, that you make your own decisions, and that everything that happens to you is a result of yourself and your own behaviours, you have a solid internal locus of control. As a result, you will feel strong, confident and happy.
On the other hand, if you feel that your life is controlled by other factors or people, you will have an external locus of control. You will feel like a victim. You will soon develop what Dr Martin Seligman calls “learned helplessness.” You will feel helpless and unable to change or improve your situation.
The power of belief
The next law he discovered was the Law of Belief. This is the basic principle that underlies most religion, psychology, philosophy and metaphysics. The Law of Belief says that “whatever you believe, with conviction, becomes your reality.”
In the New Testament it says, “According to your faith, it is done unto you.” In the Old Testament, it says, “As a man thinketh in his heart (his beliefs), so is he.” William James of Harvard wrote, “Belief creates the actual fact.”
The fact is that “you do not believe what you see, but rather, you see what you already believe.” Your deeply held beliefs form a screen of prejudices that distort your external reality and cause you to see things not the way they are, but the way you are.
Self-fulfilling prophecies
The next law that he discovered is the Law of Expectations. This law says that “whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.” In other words, you do not necessarily get what you want, but rather what you expect.
If you confidently expect something to happen, this expectation has a powerful effect on your attitude and your personality. The more confident your expectations, the more likely it is that you will do and say the things that are consistent with what you expect to happen. As a result, you will dramatically increase the probabilities that you will achieve exactly what you are hoping for.
The flipside of positive expectations are negative expectations. Unhappy people expect to fail more often than they succeed. Instead of expecting the best, they expect the worst and, because the law is neutral, they are seldom disappointed.
You are a living magnet
The next law Tracy learned about was the Law of Attraction. This law says that “you are a living magnet; you invariably attract into your life the people, ideas and circumstances that harmonise with your dominant thoughts.”
This law of attraction is one of the most important principles in explaining success and failure. It says that your thoughts are activated by your emotions, either positive or negative, and that they then create a force field of energy around you that attracts into your life, like iron filings to a magnet, exactly the people and circumstances that are in harmony with those thoughts.
Like all mental laws, the law of attraction is neutral. If you think positive thoughts, you attract positive people and circumstances. If you think negative thoughts, you attract negative people and circumstances. Successful, happy people continually think and talk about the things they want to attract into their lives. Unsuccessful, unhappy people continually talk about the people and situations that cause them to feel angry and frustrated.
“You become what you think about most of the time. You always move in the direction of your dominant thoughts.”
As within, so without
The summary law of the laws discussed is the Law of Correspondence. This law says that “your outer world is a reflection of your inner world.” It is as though you live in a 360-degree mirror. Everywhere you look, you see yourself reflected back at you. In every situation, your outer world reflects back to you, like a mirror image, exactly what you are thinking in the deepest recesses of your mind.
When you put the Laws of Cause and Effect, Belief, Expectations, Attraction and Correspondence together, you arrive at the great universal principle that explains your life and everything that happens to you: “You become what you think about – most of the time.”
You become what you think about most of the time. You always move in the direction of your dominant thoughts. Everything in your outer world is controlled and determined by what you are thinking in your inner world.
The good news is that there is only one thing in the universe over which you have complete control, and that is the content of your conscious mind. Only you can decide what you think about most of the time. Fortunately, this is all the control that you need to shape your own life and determine your own future. By taking complete control of your conscious thoughts, you can control the direction of your life.
BY CAPT. SAM ADDAIH (RTD)
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